Our assessment coordinators are responsible for a caseload of children who are in the process of applying for a statutory assessment. As the assessment process is a 20-week process, they will hold cases in all different stages of their requests. Once the EHCP is finalised and all outstanding work is complete, the case will then be handed over to a reviewing coordinator. The assessment coordinators are responsible for the processing of assessment requests; this includes reading all the documentation, preparing and presenting cases at SEND Panel, sending out decision letters, writing good quality EHCPs and communicating with professionals and parents to gather more information if necessary, attending next steps meetings when a request has been refused, chairing co-production meetings when an EHCP is being issued. All of these processes have statutory time frames set out in the SEND Code of Practice so the Team work incredibly hard to ensure these time frames are met.
Our reviewing coordinators, are responsible for all things annual review related. Each EHCP Coordinator holds a caseload of schools within the North Swindon area and all the children/young people with EHCP’s within those schools sit on their caseload. The reviewing coordinators are responsible for the processing of annual reviews; this includes reading all the documentation and making a decision about next steps, sending out decision letters, amending EHCP’s where required to ensure they accurately reflect the child/young people and are of good quality, dealing with requests to change the funding or placement of the child/young person, attending reviews where appropriate, chairing reviews for children who are home educated and managing the phase transfer process (where a child is moving between different phase of education such as Primary to Secondary). All of these processes have statutory time frames set out in the Code of Practice so the Team work incredibly hard to ensure these time frames are met.
The North Team deals with children and young people from early years up to the end of year 9 (at which point they pass over to the Preparing for Adulthood Hub).
Caseloads are not small for the EHCP Coordinators and the statutory time frames can be tight, so the team are always busy. However, they are always available to provide help and guidance on processes and are committed to the children and families across Swindon.
Below my team have described what they enjoy about their roles. Here is what they said:
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